What Does ALE Cover — And What It Doesn't

The single most common misconception I hear is that ALE "pays for you to live somewhere else." It doesn't pay your whole new cost of living. It pays the difference between your normal expenses and your temporary ones. Understanding that one word — additional — prevents most of the disputes that slow a claim down.

What ALE covers

Additional Living Expenses (called Loss of Use in many policy forms) reimburses the reasonable increase in living costs after a covered loss makes your home uninhabitable:

• Temporary lodging — hotel, short-term rental, corporate apartment, or an on-site RV. This is the biggest line item. See does homeowners insurance pay for a hotel?
• Increased food costs — the extra you spend eating out because you have no kitchen.
• Pet boarding — reasonable costs to house pets you can't keep with you.
• Storage — for belongings that can't stay in the damaged home.
• Extra transportation — added mileage if your temporary home is farther from work or school.
• Laundry and other incidental increases tied directly to the displacement.
• Rent paid to relatives — if family houses you at a reasonable, documented rate, that's a lodging expense like any other. The mechanics are in staying with family after a loss.
• Evacuation costs — under the civil authority provision, when officials bar access after covered damage nearby, typically for up to two weeks. Details in the mandatory evacuation guide.

What ALE does not cover

• Your mortgage or rent — that expense exists either way, so it isn't additional.
• Expenses without documentation — receipts and a clear before/after baseline are what get reimbursed.
• Upgrades — ALE covers a comparable standard of living, not an upgrade over your normal one.
• Losses from an uncovered peril — if the cause of damage isn't covered by the policy, ALE doesn't apply. Flood under a standard policy is the classic trap.
• Costs someone else absorbed — a relative's generosity isn't a claimable expense; only costs you incur and document qualify.

The "additional" math, worked once

Here's the mechanism on a real month, for a family of four displaced by a kitchen fire:

Two things jump out of that table every time. First, the mortgage line: it continues, and it's never claimable — which is why displaced families feel poorer than the coverage suggests. Second, the hotel drives three lines at once: its own, the food line (no kitchen), and the pet line (no pets allowed). Housing choice isn't one decision among several — it's the input the other lines follow. The same month in an on-site RV at a flat monthly rate, with a kitchen and the dog inside, routinely cuts the claimable total nearly in half — which matters enormously once you see the limits.

The two limits that end ALE

Every policy caps ALE two ways, and it ends at whichever comes first:

1. A time limit — commonly 12 or 24 months.
2. A dollar limit — often expressed as a percentage (frequently 20–30%) of the dwelling coverage.

Read the Loss of Use section of the declarations page for the specific numbers. When a repair timeline is long, the dollar cap is usually what matters — and it's exactly where a lower monthly housing cost extends how far the coverage stretches. The full cap math lives in how long does ALE last, and the calculator runs your numbers.

Why the housing choice drives the whole claim

Because lodging is the largest ALE line item — and drags food and pet costs along with it — the housing decision quietly sets the size of the claim, the pace it burns the cap, and even how much friction the claim generates. A hotel maximizes all three lines; an on-site RV tends to shrink all three at once while keeping the family on their own property. If you coordinate claims for a living, the adjuster page has the direct-billing detail; if you're the one displaced, start with the ALE housing guide.